


Clueless

by aschicca



Category: Queer as Folk (US) RPF
Genre: Blink and you'll miss it, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, omgwtfrps, shifting povs, there might be a teeny tiny sentence that might not appease Hal Spark's fans, timeline: beginning of season 3 shooting, yes that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 04:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aschicca/pseuds/aschicca
Summary: Gale is clueless, about his fans’ reactions, about Randy, and about himself. Gale really is clueless.





	Clueless

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ in 2009. The entire first part of this story came from a dream I had. I admit I really liked writing it down because the scene played so vividly in my mind. I also admit I had no idea where the story was going until I sat down to write it; I just had that scene in my mind and I knew I had to describe it. Basically, the rest of this wrote itself. I’m hoping the two parts actually fit together!
> 
> This is a complete work of fiction. I don’t know Gale or Randy. This is just the result of a twisted mind with too much time on her hands.

Gale’s POV

Here we are, then. Another year, another season. I’m once again back in Toronto after hiatus and I have to admit it truly feels like I’ve come home. It’s weird but it also… isn’t; after all, when you spend the big part of your year somewhere, when your closest friends (or some of them anyway) are there with you, in the end you start feeling at home in a place that’s… not your home, you know?

I’m walking down the street, headed towards the restaurant where the big celebratory dinner for the beginning of the third season is being held, when a girl steps in front me, and I have to stop. 

“Oh my God… it’s you, isn’t it?” She says all smiles, and I almost wait for her to clap her hands in glee.

‘No, I’m my twin brother, actually,’ I want to tell her, but for once I’m too tired to be sarcastic. And too pissed at myself for thinking I could go around town with no baseball cap or sunglasses. So I simply reply, “Yeah, I’m me. Hi.”

“Hi!” She squeals – and I’m really not being fair because what she actually does is reply to me in a happy voice, that’s all – then continues, “I really love _Queer as Folk_ , I think it’s an amazing show and…well, you must have heard these words over and over by now but… I am completely in love with Brian!”

She’s right, I’ve heard those words already (along with ‘Brian is an asshole and I hate _you_ ’ – to which I’d like to reply ‘Thanks a fucking lot, but what do _I_ have to do with it?’ – and ‘Brian is hot, I’d lay him but then I’ll have to kill him in his sleep’ – which, to be honest, I can even agree with,) and every single time I ask myself how is it even possible. How can a straight woman love Brian? Brian should be everything a woman _hates_ , for Christ’s sake! He’s what I always thought women would run away from. Yet, millions (no, I’m not exaggerating here,) of straight women are in love with Brian. How come?

Suddenly, Randy’s voice rings clearly in my ears, and I’m not surprised because for one, Randy’s voice is always in my ears lately (and I’m still blaming that fucking kiss we had to film for episode 19 last season, thank you very much), and for another, I might have watched that interview a few times… ok, a lot of times, sue me.

“Brian. Well, he’s good looking, first of all,” Randy said with a small laugh, and I can assure you, I was not blushing (or playing that bit over and over again). I was just not. And then he continued with, “and I think Brian is one of those guys, like, dark, mysterious sort of tortured individuals that dramatic people are attracted to. People are like, you know, ‘if I could just love him, I could heal him and make him all better!’, you know that kind of thing? It’s like his appeal is that he’s a challenge, and he fights off love so he makes you want to give it to him more.”

A challenge, now that I can understand. Women love a challenge, and I can see a few of them wanting to ‘love him and heal him’. I just don’t understand, and maybe never will, why so many of them love Brian. Who knows, maybe it’s even better this way.

The girl is looking at me expectanctly and I realize I still have to answer her. “Yeah, uh, thanks. I’m glad you like the show, and Brian.” 

She smiles again, then starts rummaging through her purse, obviously trying to find something for me to sign. Finally, she takes out a block of notes and a pen and says, “Could you sign this for me? To Ashley, please.”

“Of course,” I tell her taking both items in my hand. I ask her to spell out her name for me, and sign ‘To Ashley, thank you. Gale Harold,’ before handing pen and paper back to her.

I wait for Ashley to put them back in her purse, ready to say goodbye to her and reach my destination (read: ‘and hide inside the restaurant’, here), but I see she’s taking something else out of her purse. A cell phone. Uh oh.

“Can I please, please, please take a picture of you, too?” Ashley asks.

Maybe I should be relieved that she didn’t ask for my phone number (yes, that’s happened too. More than once.) “Sorry, no pictures.” I reply, looking into her eyes.

She blushes (and I feel bad about it; I don’t want to disappoint, I just… don’t want to have my picture taken,) and mumbles an “okay,” before putting her cell back inside. 

“Right, well I need to go. Bye, Ashley.” I tell her before walking away, and I catch a last glimpse of her looking at me with glassy eyes and a stunned smile on her face. 

What the hell did I do?

*

Randy’s POV

“Ok, talk to you later, Marci. Bye.” I finish my conversation with my best friend and put my cell back in my jacket. I’m very close to the restaurant where the whole cast and crew will have dinner tonight, when I spot him. Gale.

He’s talking with a girl who looks up at him with a dreamy smile, and he seems to be either deep in thought or about to break in a sweat and run away. Knowing Gale, it might be both. For a while, I stand there mulling over the idea of going over and ‘rescuing’ him, but I can imagine what the girl would think if I did. I’ve heard enough speculations on the supposed relationship between me and Gale, and so has Gale; I doubt he’d appreciate giving someone a chance to start over again. These days, everyone has an account somewhere on the net and I bet the ‘omg, I saw them together and they were soooo a couple’ news would take just a few minutes to spread. No, it’s better if I don’t approach them.

Surprisingly, I find out I’m close enough to hear part of what they’re saying. I hear the girl asking for an autograph, and I hear Gale asking her to spell her name. I never told him, but I find adorable that he does that. Of course, everyone does that, I mean who would want to sign an autograph to ‘Marie’ when the girl in front of you is named ‘Mary’? We all ask people to spell their names, but Gale is the only one who’s adorable while doing it. 

After the autograph’s signed, the girl asks for a picture… that obviously Gale denies her, then I hear him loud and clear, “Right, well I need to go. Bye, Ashley.” He starts walking, and the girl, Ashley, keeps looking at him with that dreamy expression. I can just hear what she’s thinking, “Oh my God! He remembered my name!!!” 

I smile, shaking my head. And right that moment, Gale catches up with me. “Hey, Rands,” he says and is about to hug me when he remembers that his fan could still be around. So he simply takes me by the arm and steers me into the restaurant.

Inside, he seems to breathe easier and, letting go of my arm, he finally hugs me. Fuck, I had missed that.

*

 

Gale’s POV

I wonder, and not for the first time, if I really think about _Toronto_ as my home, or if maybe it’s this feeling, this, right here, the one I always experience when I hold Randy close, that it’s like coming home for me.

“I missed you, Rands.” I tell him when the hug ends, and I smile when he replies, “Me too.”

“So, how are you?” I ask, not wanting to let this moment pass and knowing full well that, once we mixed with the others, I might not have the chance to talk with Randy again for the whole night.

“Fine, great. It’s been a good hiatus. What about you?”

“Well, you know, I’ve kept busy.” I reply winking, and he laughs.

“Busy, uh?” Randy nods, still grinning. “I saw you were busy outside the restaurant too, tonight.”

“Fuck! If you saw me why didn’t you come to my rescue?” 

“You don’t really look like the common damsel in distress, Gale.”

“That doesn’t mean I _wasn’t_ distressed! You know how I get around people, Rands!” I look at him shaking my head, pretending to be disappointed for his betrayal.

“Yeah, well, I figured you could survive a simple little girl.”

“How many times do I have to tell you these things? Those are _not_ simple girls,” I look straight into his eyes, then lean closer and whisper in his ear, “Those are _fans_!” And I offer him my most practiced ‘shudder-of-doom’, making him laugh out loud.

Randy places his hand on my chest, looks up at me and says, “Yeah, good point.”

We share a mutual grin, and I’m debating with myself trying to decide if it would seem awkward for me to take him into my arms again, especially with what happened after _the kiss_ , when a voice comes from behind us.

“There you are! We’ve been waiting for you two to arrive, we’re all here already. What’s keeping you so long?”

Peter comes near us, and kisses first Randy then me on the lips; it’s weird how comfortable I feel kissing every cast member on the lips, never happened to me before _Queer as Folk_ , and I doubt it’ll happen with future jobs. But here, among us, we all kiss each other on the lips. Well, except Hal, but that goes without saying. Peter then, hooks his arms with ours and, all three together, we join the others.

And I found out I was right. I don’t have the chance to talk with Randy anymore that night.

*** 

Randy’s POV

Working with Fab is not bad. It’s stimulating to have a new partner to work with after all the time I’ve worked with Gale alone. I’m really enjoying my time off from the ‘Brian and Justin show’. I really am.

Of course, it would be even better if I could have time off the ‘Brian and Justin show’ and still get to work with Gale, too. I might not miss Brian, but I definitely miss Gale. Seeing him outside work doesn’t really help, either, since I was so used to spending all of my time with him, on-set and off-set.

Plus, it’s not like I’m seeing a lot of him off set lately. I think he might be avoiding me. That first night at the restaurant, when he hugged me and seemed to want to keep hugging me for a long time, I thought things were good between us, that ‘the accident with the kiss’ was forgotten. We hadn’t exactly talked about what had happened during the shooting of that scene, I thought we’d have the time to work things out but it was the end of the season and things were hectic on set. And then, Gale had fled right after the wrap party and I hadn’t heard from him once during hiatus. 

The hug in the restaurant and the easy companionship we had been able to re-establish immediately, made me think we didn’t need to talk about ‘the accident’, that we were actually good. I guess I was wrong.

Gale was definitely avoiding me, and since I didn’t see him often on set, I couldn’t do much to remedy the situation. That’s why, I felt almost like kissing Dan and Ron when they informed us that Gale and I had a sex scene to shoot for the second episode of season three. Brian is having sex with a trick but in his mind he sees only Justin, so we needed to film that. I looked at Gale, smiling, and I was surprised to see him looking at me with a worried expression. 

‘Right,’ I decided right there and then, ‘that’s it, we need to talk.’

So I cornered him at lunch break and convinced him to come eat in my trailer. “Okay, Gale. Time to tell me what the hell is wrong with you lately.” I tell him.

He looks at me with his best ‘I’m so innocent and so cute, how can you even think I’m hiding something?’ expression, but it’s wasted on me and he knows it. He sighs and finally answers.

“Nothing’s wrong, Rands, really.”

“Then why did you look like someone had just shot your puppy when they told us we have a sex scene to shoot?”

“I didn’t.”

“Gale,” I reply with a tone that tells him not to fuck with me.

“Really, I didn’t! I… ah, fuck Rands, you know why. You know that after… after… _that_ , I… you know.”

“You got hard, yes. But Gale, after a scene like that one, after they kept pushing us to show desperation and passion, it would have been weird if you hadn’t gotten aroused! That was one hell of a kiss!” I say all this looking straight into Gale’s eyes and I can see he’s uncomfortable. I want to do something to change that, I want to make him understand that there’s nothing wrong with getting hard over a particular hot scene. Quite the contrary, really. If only he knew how many times _I_ walked out with a hard-on after one of our scenes!

Gale’s face is tight, he looks almost constipated, and his voice is just a whisper when he asks, “It was normal, right?”

“Yes!”

He nods. “Then tell me, how normal is it that I had to lock myself in a room after that to jerk off but couldn’t come until my mind chose to focus on _you_?” Gale stops for a moment and I can see his hesitation. I want to help him out here, I want to speak for him, as I usually do, so that he doesn’t have to say the words himself but… fuck! I’m stunned, too stunned to speak. Did he really…? I mean… really? Gale’s voice, merely a whisper again, startles me. “How normal is that it all had become almost painful ‘cause I didn’t seem to be able to, you know, finish, but then I came within minutes when your face popped in front of my eyes?”

Am I really supposed to answer to that? Seriously?

*

Gale’s POV

What the fuck am I doing? Someone please wake me up, because I refuse to believe I just confessed everything to _Randy_. There are some things you just don’t say to your gay co-star, especially not if said gay co-star, and everyone else, you included, thinks you’re straight!

Randy’s not replying and I can’t really blame him for it. I half expect him to never be able to speak again, which given we’re talking about Randy would really be a joke. The guy never shuts up when we’re together. It fits me perfectly, too. I’m the silent type, well most of the time, so it’s nice to have him do most of the talking.

This silence though it’s not really making me feel at ease, so I decide to break it. “Listen, Rands, can we just forget it? Pretend I didn’t say anything and we’ll just go from there, ok?” I even manage a smile, even if I think it might look more like a grimace.

Randy is still silent and now I’m getting worried. “Uh… Randy? You in there?” He blinks and breathes so at least I know he’s alive. This situation might even be funny if I wasn’t so fucking scared to have ruined everything.

Finally, he looks at me and says, “I’m here, I was trying to decide if I wanted to hit you over the head or jump you.”

“Hit me… hey! What did I do?”

“Way to miss the mark, Gale.” He says shaking his head and looking at me like I’m an adorable retarded. I like the adorable part but why retarded? What did I… oh… “Jump me?” I ask, “As in, jump me?”

“Yes, you infuriating idiot. Jump you. Why didn’t you tell me you were jerking off on me? I might have been willing to lend a hand…” Randy says grinning.

“I… would you believe me if I told you I wasn’t sure that you, you know, would be… uh… willing?” 

“Then you really are an idiot, Gale. Three seasons, countless sex scenes, and even more nights out together, and you really never got it?”

I never got it, no. Contrary to what some people might think, I don’t go around thinking that everyone has a crush on me. I’m really nothing special, and no, I’m not being modest. I know I’m moderately good looking (if you ask me, Randy is the beautiful one between us, I’m just… nice looking) and I know I’m fun to be around. But I’m really not _that_ special. I actually ask myself what is it that people see in me that makes them think I am something more than a regular, nice guy.

So, no, I didn’t think Randy could be interested in me. Maybe I should have, but I thought… why would he? I mean, he’s hot and can have anyone he wants. Why should he waste his time running after a straight (more or less), clueless (more than less) guy? I suppose I really am an idiot.

I shake my head and smile shyly at him, and suddenly I find myself with an armful of Randy. His arms around me, his body fitting perfectly with mine, his mouth (finally, _finally_!) on mine. I hold him close, I have no intention of letting him go, and I take control of the kiss. 

If I could actually think right this moment, I bet I’d say that this kiss resembles the one that started all this, the kiss in episode 19. We’re clinging to each other and I’m devouring Randy’s mouth. I tug at his clothes almost violently, and he moans in my mouth. I want him so much it almost scares me.

Maybe that’s how Brian felt during that kiss. But Brian was losing Justin and the kiss ended in the worst of ways. I’ve just found my Randy and I have no intention of losing him. 

This kiss will end very differently, I think, as we land, laughing, on his bed. Oh yes, very differently.

**Author's Note:**

> The interview mentioned in this story can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrW5o6l-4Dg)


End file.
